Ukraine’s prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, said on Friday during a meeting with EU officials that his government would do everything necessary to ensure that Ukraine joined the WTO by February 2007. Tom Warner: The fact that Yanukovich has set a target date for WTO accession in front of the EU delegation is promising, but should be taken with a grain of salt. If Yanukovich is serious and he exerts his influence on the coalition to pass the necessary legislation, his government could indeed get all the entry requirements out of the way by February. But so far it is Yanukovich and his Cabinet who have been holding up accession by not forwarding the necessary bills to parliament. Yanukovich tends to change tunes depending on his audience, so it will be interesting to hear what he says on WTO when Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov visits later this week. Russia has been going slow on WTO lately while urging Ukraine to synchronize its accession.